Wednesday, January 15, 2014

More about calendars

At #Wikidata more and more calendars are identified. Some are based on the moon, some on the sun others are ... complicated. Many are in active use and some are historic.

Some of the issues:

a week is not part of a month, weeks can be in multiple months

a week is not part of a year, weeks can be in multiple years

months in different calendars with the same name need to be separated when they are not the same

there are multiple divisions of a year, think months, seasons

calendars in use in India are complex

Adding items for months that Wikipedia merged together is obvious; it is the only way to ensure consistency and add statements specific to a calendar. This may prevent the use of info-boxes for now. Such issues will arise in other places as well and there will be a solution in time.

It will help when people with expertise get involved in getting the information right.